He said, he never had it properly ascertained that the Scotch Highlanders and the Irish understood each other'. I told him that my cousin, Colonel Graham, of the Royal Highlanders, whom I met at Drogheda, told me they did. JOHNSON. "Sir, if the Highlanders understood Irish, why translate the New Testament into Erse, as was lately done at Edinburgh, when there is an Irish translation?" BOSWELL." Although the Erse and Irish are both dialects of the same language, there may be a good deal of diversity between them, as between the different dialects in Italy." The Swede went away, and Dr. Johnson continued his reading of the papers. I said, “I am afraid, sir, it is troublesome." "Why, sir," said he, "I do not take much delight in it; but I'll go through it."

We went to the Mitre, and dined in the room where he and I first supped together. He gave me great hopes of my cause. "Sir," said he, "the go

[In Mr. Anderson's Historical Sketches of the Native Irish, we find the following observations:

"The Irish and Gaelic languages are the same, and formerly what was spoken in the Highlands of Scotland was generally called Irish. Those who have attended to the subject must have observed, that the word Irish was gradually changed into Erse, denoting the language that is now generally called Gaelic." Mr. Anderson states that, when he was in Galway, in Ireland, in 1814, he found a vessel there from Lewis, one of the Hebrides, the master of which remarked to him that the people here spoke curious Gaelic, but he understood them easily, and commerce is actually carried on between the Highlanders and the Irish through the medium of their common language.”—P. 133.

My friend, Colonel Meyrick Shawe, who pointed out Mr. Anderson's work to me, adds, "I can venture to say from my own experience, that were it not for the difference of pronunciation, the Irish and the Highlanders would be perfectly intelligible to each other; and even with that disadvantage, they become so in a short time. I have indeed met some Highlanders whom I could not understand at all; but there was a Captain Cameron in the same regiment with me (76th), who spoke with an accent more like the Irish than usual, whom I could understand perfectly when he spoke slow. There are, I am told, few words in Irish that are not intelligible to the Highlanders, but there are many in the Gaelic which an Irishman cannot understand. The Scotch, as I am told, and as is natural from their position, have many Pictish and other foreign words. The Irish have no Pictish words, but many Latin."

Sir Walter Scott also informs me, that "there is no doubt the languages are the same, and the difference in pronunciation and construction not very considerable. The Erse or Earish is the Irish; and the race called Scots came originally from Ulster."—ED.]

You

vernment of a schoolmaster is somewhat of the nature of military government; that is to say, it must be arbitrary, it must be exercised by the will of one man, according to particular circumstances. must show some learning upon this occasion. You must show, that a schoolmaster has a prescriptive right to beat; and that an action of assault and battery cannot be admitted against him unless there is some great excess, some barbarity. This man has maimed none of his boys. They are all left with the full exercise of their corporeal faculties. In our schools in England many boys have been maimed ; yet I never heard of an action against a schoolmaster on that account. Puffendorf, I think, maintains the right of a schoolmaster to beat his scholars."

On Saturday, March 27, I introduced to him Sir Alexander Macdonald', with whom he had expressed a wish to be acquainted. He received him very courteously.

Sir Alexander observed, that the chancellors in England are chosen from views much inferiour to the office, being chosen from temporary political views. JOHNSON. "Why, sir, in such a government as ours, no man is appointed to an office because he is the

[Next brother of Sir James Macdonald, whom Mr. Boswell calls the Marcellus of Scotland, and whom the concurrent testimony of his contemporaries proves to have been a very extraordinary young man. He died at Rome in 1766. (See post, 5th Sept. 1773.) Sir Alexander succeeded his brother as eighth baronet, and was created an Irish baron, by the title of Lord Macdonald, in 1776. The late chief baron of the exchequer, Sir Archibald Macdonald, was their youngest brother. We shall see more of Sir Alexander under the year 1773, during the Tour to the Hebrides.-ED.]

2

[This, no doubt, inay occasionally happen, and a lord chancellor sometimes disappoints the expectations not only of the country, but of those who make him; yet on the whole, it seems hard to discover how chancellors can be selected without some attention to political interests. A party coming into power generally makes the ablest and most prominent lawyer of its principles chancellor. There is reason to suppose that a man thus selected in the face of the public, and from an eminence to which he has raised himself, will be better fitted to discharge the various duties of that great office, than if chancellors were to be chosen by some other standard. What, however, that other standard should or could be, Sir Alexander Macdonald did not suggest, and probably never considered. ED.]

fittest for it, nor hardly in any other government; because there are so many connexions and dependencies to be studied. A despotick prince may choose a man to an office, merely because he is the fittest for it. The king of Prussia may do it." Sir A. "I think, sir, almost all great lawyers, such at least as have written upon law, have known only law, and nothing else." JOHNSON. "Why, no, sir; Judge Hale was a great lawyer, and wrote upon law; and yet he knew a great many other things, and has written upon other things. Selden too." Sir A. "Very true, sir; and Lord Bacon. But was not Lord Coke a mere lawyer?" JOHNSON. "Why, I am afraid he was, but he would have taken it very ill if you had told him so. He would have prosecuted you for scandal." BOSWELL. "Lord Mansfield is not a mere lawyer." JOHNSON. "No, sir, I never was in Lord Mansfield's company; but Lord Mansfield was distinguished at the university. Lord Mansfield, when he first came to town, drank champagne with the wits,' as Prior says. He was the friend of Pope 1." Sir A. "Barristers, I believe, are not so abusive now as they were formerly. I fancy they had less law long ago, and so were obliged to take to abuse to fill up the time. Now they have such a number of precedents, they have no occasion for abuse." JOHNSON. "Nay, sir, they had more law

1 [He was one of his executors. The large space which (thanks to Mr. Boswell) Dr. Johnson occupies in our estimate of the society of his day, makes it surprising that he should never have been in company with Lord Mansfield; but Boswell was disposed to overrate the extent and rank of Johnson's acquaintance. It is proper here to correct an error relative to Lord Mansfield and Dr. Johnson, which has found its way into print. In Miss Hawkins' Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 218, she gives the following anecdote on the authority of her brother, who states that, "calling upon Dr. Johnson shortly after the death of Lord Mansfield, and mentioning the event, Johnson answered, Ah, sir; there was little learning and less virtue.'” It happens, unluckily for the accuracy of this anecdote, that Lord Mansfield survived Dr. Johnson full ten years.—ED.]

2 [The general tone of society is probably improved in this respect, and barristers are more men of the world, and mix more in polite company than at the times Sir A. Macdonald alluded to.-ED.]

long ago than they have now. As to precedents, to be sure they will increase in course of time; but the more precedents there are, the less occasion is there for law; that is to say, the less occasion is there for investigating principles." Sir A. "I have been correcting several Scotch accents in my friend Boswell. I doubt, sir, if any Scotchman ever attains to a perfect English pronunciation." JOHNSON. JOHNSON. "Why, sir, few of them do, because they do not persevere after acquiring a certain degree of it. But, sir, there can be no doubt that they may attain to a perfect English pronunciation, if they will. We find how near they come to it; and certainly, a man who conquers nineteen parts of the Scotch accent, may conquer the twentieth. But, sir, when a man has got the better of nine-tenths he grows weary, he relaxes his diligence, he finds he has corrected his accent so far as not to be disagreeable, and he no longer desires his friends to tell him when he is wrong, nor does he choose to be told. Sir, when people watch me narrowly, and I do not watch myself, they will find me out to be of a particular county. In the same manner Dunning may be found out to be a Devonshire man. So most Scotchmen may be found out. But, sir, little

aberrations are of no disadvantage. I never catched Mallet in a Scotch accent; and yet Mallet, I suppose, was past five-and-twenty before he came to London 1."

Upon another occasion I talked to him on this subject, having myself taken some pains to improve my pronunciation, by the aid of the late Mr. Love, of Drury-lane theatre, when he was a player at

[He says, in the Lives of the Poets, that " of Mallet he had a very slight personal knowledge." Mallet came to England in 1723, when he was about twenty-five years of age.-ED.]

2 [Love was an assumed name. He was the son of Mr. Dance, the architect. He resided many years at Edinburgh as manager of the theatre of that city; he removed in 1762 to Drury-lane, and died in 1771. He wrote some theatrical pieces of no reputation.-ED.]

Edinburgh, and also of old Mr. Sheridan. Johnson said to me, "Sir, your pronunciation is not offensive." With this concession I was pretty well satisfied; and let me give my countrymen of North-Britain an advice not to aim at absolute perfection in this respect; not to speak high English, as we are apt to call what is far removed from the Scotch, but which is by no means good English, and makes "the fools who use it" truly ridiculous. Good English is plain, easy, and smooth in the mouth of an unaffected English gentleman. A studied and factitious pronunciation, which requires perpetual attention, and imposes perpetual constraint, is exceedingly disgusting. A small intermixture of provincial peculiarities may, perhaps, have an agreeable effect, as the notes of different birds concur in the harmony of the grove, and please more than if they were all exactly alike. I could name some gentlemen of Ireland', to whom a slight proportion of the accent and recitative of that country is an advantage. The same observation will apply to the gentlemen of Scotland. I do not mean that we should speak as broad as a certain prosperous member of parliament from that country; though it has been well observed, that "it has been of no small use to him; as it rouses the attention of the house by its uncommonness; and is equal to tropes and figures in a good English speaker.” I would give as an instance of what I mean to recommend to my countrymen, the pronunciation of the late Sir Gilbert Elliot; and may I presume to

1 [Mr. Boswell probably included, in this observation, Mr. Burke; who, to the last, retained more of the Irish accent than was agreeable to less indulgent ears.-ED.]

2 [Mr. Dundas, successively lord advocate, secretary of state, first lord of the admiralty, and Viscount Melville, whose accent, and many of whose phrases, were to the last peculiarly national.-ED.]

3 [The third baronet, father of the first Lord Minto; a gentleman of distinction in the political, and not unknown in the poetical world: he died in 1777. Is it not, however, rather Hibernian to recommend as a model of pronunciation, one who was already dead?—ignotum per ignotius.—ED.]